Which is the best 9Be carrier for 10Be/9Be accelerator mass spectrometry?

Silke Merchel,Régis Braucher,Johannes Lachner,Georg Rugel

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2021.101486

Silke Merchel, Régis Braucher + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2021.101486

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Abstract

Commercial 9Be solutions used for chemical preparation of samples for accelerator mass spectrometry contain the cosmogenic long-lived radionuclide 10Be at elevated but different 10Be/9Be levels. Within a systematic study of recently produced solutions, comparison to published data and new data on customised solutions from minerals, we recommend - if no customised solution is available - the 9Be solutions from Australian Chemical Reagents (ACR) or from LGC. They contain 10Be/9Be at the 3.4 × 10−15 level, which is still suitable for the majority of Earth science applications, compared to customised solutions at the 10−16 level for lowest-level studies. Commercial solutions from Scharlab having different lot numbers, i.e. an identification number assigned to a particular lot of material from a single manufacturer, vary in 10Be/9Be by up to a factor of nine. Hence, it seems an advisable strategy to buy a bigger quantity of a single production batch (such as 10 × 100 ml bottles of 9Be at 1 g l−1) and have them tested once at any AMS facility before first use.•The best 9Be carrier for low-level 10Be/9Be applications is a customised one from minerals like phenakite.•The best 9Be carriers for medium- and high-level 10Be/9Be applications are currently from Australian Chemical Reagents (ACR) or from LGC.•As 9Be carriers from Scharlab of different batches (LOT) contain 10Be/9Be at different levels, it is advisable to buy a bigger number of bottles of the same LOT of commercial carriers after being identified to have reasonably low isotope ratios.

Highlights

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Commercial 9Be solutions used for chemical preparation of samples for accelerator mass spectrometry contain the cosmogenic long-lived radionuclide 10Be at elevated but different 10Be/9Be levels
There had been a few exceptions for commercial carriers being acceptably low, e.g., one from the company MERCK used for more than twenty years at the now-closed accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) facility at Gif-sur-Yvette [14] and those from the company Scharlab being for a certain production time in the 10−16 and 1-2 × 10−15 10Be/9Be range, respectively [3]

Summary

Method Article

Silke Merchel a,b,∗, Régis Braucher c, Johannes Lachner a,b, Georg Rugel a a Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Dresden, Germany b Isotope Physics, University of Vienna, Austria c CEREGE, CNRS, Collège de France, IRD, INRAE, Aix Marseille Univ., Plateau de l’Arbois, Aix-en-Provence 13545, France abstract. Within a systematic study of recently produced solutions, comparison to published data and new data on customised solutions from minerals, we recommend - if no customised solution is available - the 9Be solutions from Australian Chemical Reagents (ACR) or from LGC They contain 10Be/9Be at the 3.4 × 10−15 level, which is still suitable for the majority of Earth science applications, compared to customised solutions at the 10−16 level for lowest-level studies. As 9Be carriers from Scharlab of different batches (LOT) contain 10Be/9Be at different levels, it is advisable to buy a bigger number of bottles of the same LOT of commercial carriers after being identified to have reasonably low isotope ratios. Subject Area: More specific subject area: Method name: Name and reference of original method: Resource availability: Earth and Planetary Sciences Cosmogenic nuclide Best-suited 9 Be carrier Best-suited 9Be carrier (described in Merchel et al, 2008; doi:10.1016/j.nimb.2008.07.03) not applicable

Background and motivation

Conclusion and recommendation